London 2012 Olympics: high hopes for British gymnasts

The new generation could be even better than our current crop of champions. Simon
Briggs reports

Like synchronised swimming and beach volleyball, gymnastics is one of those rare sports where women take top billing.

In Britain, our best-known performer is Beth Tweddle - a veteran of 25 who has won more major international honours than the rest of the country put together. Until 2003, when she took bronze on the asymmetric bars, Britain had never won a world championship medal in any gymnastic discipline.

But the boys are now beginning to catch up, and maybe even to move ahead. The emergence of Louis Smith has been followed by a new generation of young male gymnasts, who are tumbling and vaulting their way towards the 2012 Olympics.

Daniel Purvis won a world championship bronze on the floor last October, while Daniel Keatings achieved another breakthrough with gold on the pommel horse at the European Championships - a first in Britain's history.

Year by year, dividends are improving. But this is no time to slacken off, because the 2011 World Championships - to be held in Tokyo in October - will decide how many gymnasts Britain can send to the Olympics.

The target is to finish in the top eight places in the team events. If this is achieved - and at the Rotterdam World Championships last year the men finished fourth and the woman fifth - there will be six performers of each gender at the North Greenwich Arena. That would open yet another new frontier for the sport.

The main challenges in 2012 are likely to come from the established gymnastic powers - Russia, China and the United States. But Britain is now competing with the other European contenders, such as France and Romania, as well as Germany - the nation that invented gymnastics back in the 19th century.

Russian coaches feature heavily on the British staff, and there was a brief outbreak of bad publicity during the Rotterdam championships, when two of them - head coach Andrei Popov and his colleague Sergei Sizhanov - became involved in a drunken brawl and were sent home in disgrace. But the sting was soon taken out of the story by an unprecedented haul of three individual medals. Both men are still part of the set-up.

Despite this brief hiccup, British gymnastics is in the middle of a virtuous cycle and UK Sport has clearly taken note. The bureaucrats made another £625,000 of funding available last year, partly at the expense of figure skating, while also overhauling the facilities at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre.

The investment is still not lavish. On a day-to-day basis, the gymnasts often have to make do with public facilities such as the backstreet sports club that Smith visits in Huntingdon. But they do also have extended periods working at Lilleshall and at Loughborough University, where they can use video cameras and motion analysis software to assess their performances.

With luck, Britain's fortunes could soon get even better. Popov and other experts believe that our best prospect of all could be the youngest. Sam Oldham, 18, won the Youth Olympic title on the high bar last year and has been tipped as one of our best medal prospects for London. Smith has already commented: "I honestly think he will be better than me."